James.galbraith

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Apple today updated Pages, Numbers, and Keynote, its iWork apps designed for the Mac, to version 10.0 with a new set of features. The updates add support for iCloud Folder Sharing for collaborative files with macOS 10.15.4 installed, plus there are options to edit shared documents offline.


There are also new templates and editable shapes to work with, a redesigned template chooser, and an option to add color, gradients, and images to the background of any document. Each app's release notes are below.

Pages Release Notes

• Select from a variety of gorgeous new templates to help you get started.


• Add a Pages document to a shared iCloud Drive folder to automatically start collaborating. Requires macOS 10.15.4.


• Add a drop cap to make a paragraph stand out with a large, decorative first letter.


• Apply a color, gradient, or image to the background of any document.


• Easily access your recently used templates in a redesigned template chooser.


• Print or export a PDF of your document with comments included.


• Edit shared documents while offline and your changes will upload when you're back online.


• Enhance your documents with a variety of new, editable shapes.

Numbers Release Notes

• Create spreadsheets with more rows and columns than ever before.


• Apply a color to a background of a sheet.


• Add a Numbers spreadsheet to a shared ‌iCloud Drive‌ to automatically start collaborating. Requires macOS 10.15.4.


• Edit shared spreadsheets while offline and your changes will upload when you're back online.


• Easily access your recently used templates in a redesigned template chooser.


• Print or export a PDF of your spreadsheet with comments included.


• Add a drop cap to text in a shape.


• Enhance your spreadsheets with a variety of new, editable shapes.

Keynote Release Notes

• Add a Keynote presentation to a shared ‌iCloud Drive‌ to automatically start collaborating. Requires macOS 10.15.4.


• Edit shared presentations while offline and your changes will upload when you're back online.


• Select from a variety of gorgeous new themes to help you get started.


• Easily access your recently used themes in a redesigned template chooser.


• Print or export a PDF of your presentation with comments included.


• Add a drop cap to make text stand out with a large, decorative first letter.


• Enhance your presentations with a variety of new, editable shapes.


• New "Keyboard" text build in and build out animation

Apple does not appear to have released updates to its iWork for iOS apps, so the new features are limited to the Mac versions at this time. All of the new updates can be downloaded from the Mac App Store.

• Pages for macOS [Direct Link]


• Keynote for macOS [Direct Link]


• Numbers for macOS [Direct Link]

Apple's iWork for Mac apps are all free downloads.
This article, "Apple Updates iWork Apps for Mac With iCloud Folder Sharing and Other New Features" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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[calls for complete briefing by Friday.]

Before DENNIS, ELROD, and DUNCAN, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM: IT IS ORDERED that the district court's order of March 30, 2020 is TEMPORARILY STAYED until further order of this court to allow this court sufficient time to consider petitioners' emergency motion for stay and petition for writ of mandamus.

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that plaintiffs-respondents be directed to file a response to the emergency motion for stay no later than Wednesday, April 1, 2020, at 8:00 a.m. Any reply by petitioners is due no later than Wednesday, April 1, 2020, at 8:00 p.m.

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that plaintiffs-respondents be directed to file a response to the petition for writ of mandamus no later than Thursday, April 2, 2020, at 8 p.m. Any reply by petitioners is due no later than Friday, April 3, 2020, at 5 p.m.

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the filing of an amicus brief by States, Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia, is allowed.

JAMES L. DENNIS, Circuit Judge, dissenting: A federal judge has already concluded that irreparable harm would flow from allowing the Executive Order to prohibit abortions during this critical time. I would deny the stay. Moreover, I write separately to make clear that, per the Executive Order, "any procedure that, if performed in accordance with the commonly accepted standard of clinical practice, would not deplete the hospital capacity or the personal protective equipment needed to cope with the COVID-19 disaster" is exempt.

You can see the district court decision and stay briefing here, and my thoughts on the underlying question here. (Recall that the restrictions are part of a general restriction on "non-essential" surgeries and procedures.) Thanks to Josh Blackman for the pointer.

And for many Republicans, that's just fine.

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
Old man Weinersmith shakes his cane at you.

Today's News:

Trump listens as Mike Lindell, CEO of MyPillow, speaks during the daily briefing on the novel coronavirus on Monday. | Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

The latest variety show featured guest appearances, over-the-top praise of Trump, and verbal sparring with reporters.

The coronavirus pandemic has made it impossible for President Donald Trump to hold the political rallies he loves so much. But he’s found a substitute of sorts with daily White House coronavirus briefings that have quickly descended into farce.

There were more than 500 coronavirus deaths in the United States on Monday alone — the most of any single day yet. You wouldn’t know that from watching Trump’s briefing, however. Viewers were instead treated to a variety show featuring absurdly over-the-top deification of the president, quips about his hair, infomercials for numerous private companies, the promotion of unproven drugs, and verbal sparring sessions with reporters.

The briefing came a day after Trump posted unsettling tweets bragging about the TV ratings of the press conferences, which are only necessary because his government bungled its preparations for a deadly pandemic. While Trump once used the briefings to announce new policies, recently they have featured more misinformation and aggrandizement than news. Monday’s was the least newsworthy conference to date, and will only bolster growing arguments that cable networks (and the public at large) would be best served to ignore them.

“God gave us grace on November 8, 2016, to change the course we were on”

While a number of state governors plead with the Trump administration to do more to provide them with ventilators and other needed medical gear on a large scale, Trump has used the White House briefings to showcase executives from private companies who are stepping in to fill the role the federal government would usually take in responding to a public health crisis. On Monday, it was MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s turn to receive the informercial treatment.

Lindell is a Fox News fixture and staunch Trump backer. In fact, he reportedly told associates that Trump is pushing him to run for governor in Minnesota. To his credit, as the coronavirus crisis has worsened, Lindell’s company has pivoted from pillows to making masks for health care workers. That’s praiseworthy, and ostensibly the reason Trump brought him to the White House. What was troubling, however, was Lindell’s portrayal of the Trump presidency in biblical terms.

“God gave us grace on November 8, 2016, to change the course we were on,” Lindell said at the end of his remarks. “God had been taken out of our schools and lives, a nation had turned its back on God. I encourage you to use this time at home to get back in the word. Read our Bible.”

“I did not know he was going to do that, but he’s a friend of mine and I appreciate it,” Trump replied.

Lindell’s comments came at the end of the pre-questions portion of the briefing. Instead of leveling with the American people about the coronavirus, Trump spoke at length about unproven remedies (“Bayer has donated one million doses of the chloroquine”), promoted new coronavirus tests in a QVC-like manner, and complimented himself on his hair’s performance in the Rose Garden wind (“My hair is blowing around. And it is mine”).

Things didn’t get any less farcical when it came time for Trump to take questions.

“I know South Korea better than anybody”

Among the first questions Trump took was one from the ultra-sycophantic One America News Network (OAN). As they’ve done in previous briefings, on Monday an OAN staffer served up a loaded question, in this case asking Trump to talk about a false equivalency she drew between coronavirus deaths and abortions. Trump, to his credit, didn’t take the bait and basically dodged the question.

One of the more informative moments of the briefing came a short time later, when Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, took the mic to correct the record about the hope Trump expressed that the coronavirus perhaps might not flare up again in the fall, even if the outbreak we’re currently dealing with is brought under control before then.

“In fact, I would anticipate that that would actually happen, because of the degree of transmissibility,” Fauci said, immediately after Trump said, “I hope it doesn’t happen.”

The event wound down with Trump sparring with two of his longtime media foes — Yamiche Alcindor of PBS NewsHour and Jim Acosta of CNN. Acosta asked Trump what his message is to people who are upset about the fact he spent weeks downplaying the coronavirus instead of preparing for it, but Trump dismissed the question and then went on the attack.

“It’s people like you and CNN that say things like that, that, uh, it’s why people just don’t want to listen to CNN anymore,” Trump said. “You could ask a normal question ... I don’t want panic in the country. I could cause panic much better than even you. I would make you look like a minor league player. But you know what, I don’t want to do that.”

Trump concluded, “Instead of asking a nasty, snarky question like that, you should ask a real question, and other than that I’m going to go to somebody else.”

(On Tuesday morning, Trump retweeted a video of his exchange with Acosta posted by one of his campaign staffers along with the caption, “BOOM ... Trump obliterates CNN.”)

After taking a question asking him to explain the accusations he made the day before about nurses and New York officials misappropriating medical gear — “I expressed what was told to me by a tremendous power in the business,” Trump said, citing an unnamed source despite the fact that he’s attacked reports for citing unnamed sources as recently as Saturday — the president called on Alcindor.

Alcindor asked Trump a straightforward, fair question about coronavirus testing.

“You said several times that the United States has ramped up testing, but the United States is still not testing per capita as many people as other countries like South Korea,” Alcindor said. “Why is that?”

Instead of answering it, however, Trump lied — “It’s very much on par,” he claimed, falsely — and then for the second-straight day lectured Alcindor about how she should do her job.

“I know South Korea better than anybody,” Trump said. “Do you know how many people are in Seoul? Do you know how big the city of Seoul is? 38 million people. That’s bigger than anything we have.”

Trump’s claim was way off. The population of Seoul is about 10 million.

Trump went on to admonish Alcindor that “you should be saying congratulations instead of asking a really snarky question,” before abruptly ending the briefing.

These all-style, no-substance briefings are especially off-key amid a deadly pandemic

While officials like New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz provide daily coronavirus briefings that are filled with facts and announcements of significance to their constituents, Trump’s have devolved into spectacle. It appears cable networks are belatedly waking up to this — CNN cut away from Trump’s latest briefing as soon as Lindell took the stage.

As my colleague Matthew Yglesias has argued, to the extent they’re trying to inform viewers about the coronavirus instead of just entertaining them, cable networks should probably stop broadcasting them live, and instead highlight the newsworthy parts later. On days like Monday, that would mean more or less ignoring them altogether.

Trump craves attention, and with political rallies off the table for the foreseeable future, the briefings provide his daily fix. They provide him with some of his largest TV audiences to date — a fact not hugely surprising given public interest in a pandemic that has put their families at risk, but one that Trump has bragged about nonetheless.

But the briefings have become increasingly rally-like, with wild claims and guest appearances. And rarely has the content of the Trump Show reflected a president as out of touch with reality as it did on Monday.

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The news moves fast. To stay updated, follow Aaron Rupar on Twitter, and read more of Vox’s policy and politics coverage.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Zoom, the video conferencing service whose use has spiked amid the Covid-19 pandemic, claims to implement end-to-end encryption, widely understood as the most private form of internet communication, protecting conversations from all outside parties. In fact, Zoom is using its own definition of the term, one that lets Zoom itself access unencrypted video and audio from meetings. With millions of people around the world working from home in order to slow the spread of the coronavirus, business is booming for Zoom, bringing more attention on the company and its privacy practices, including a policy, later updated, that seemed to give the company permission to mine messages and files shared during meetings for the purpose of ad targeting. Still, Zoom offers reliability, ease of use, and at least one very important security assurance: As long as you make sure everyone in a Zoom meeting connects using "computer audio" instead of calling in on a phone, the meeting is secured with end-to-end encryption, at least according to Zoom's website, its security white paper, and the user interface within the app. But despite this misleading marketing, the service actually does not support end-to-end encryption for video and audio content, at least as the term is commonly understood. Instead it offers what is usually called transport encryption. Further reading: Regarding Zoom.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

How Trump's reelection strategy could further threaten the country.

Russia’s top doctor, who met with President Vladimir Putin a week ago, has tested positive for the coronavirus, state television reported on Tuesday.

AFP reports: “Last Tuesday Denis Protsenko met with the Russian leader who inspected the Kommunarka hospital while wearing a hazmat suit. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian agencies that Putin took regular tests and there was no reason to worry about his health.

The NYT reports that Putin has largely disappeared from view because he doesn’t like to deliver bad news to the Russian people: “By late Monday, at least 14 Russian regions and the country’s second biggest city, St Petersburg, had announced that they, too, were ordering residents to stay at home, indicating that the world’s largest nation, a vast territory covering 13 time zones, could soon be in lockdown. For weeks the Kremlin and its cheerleaders in the state news media have insisted that, unlike Italy, Spain and, more recently, the United States, Russia could tackle the virus without major disruption.”

The post Russia’s Top Doctor, Who Met with Vladimir Putin Days Ago, Tests Positive for Coronavirus appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

In most emergencies, networks seem eager to show images of people looting, but with the coronavirus crisis, those images don’t seem to be reaching our screens. Which is surprising, because the level of looting has been severe; it’s not televisions or sneakers, it’s the air, the water, the soil, and the future.

Under the cover of the coronavirus, Donald Trump has let polluters know that all bets are off. Anything goes. And the usual suspects are welcoming the opportunity.

Since taking office, Trump has made destroying environmental rules set in place by President Barack Obama both one of his goals and bragging points. But the rule over limiting emissions from vehicles and requiring higher mileage from vehicles has been something of a sticking point, partly because there is the complication that California and other states have the authority to set their own limits, and partly because not even the automakers want Trump’s sky-blackening proposal.

But, with all eyes turned to the immediate threat of the virus, Trump’s team has been rushing to complete this smash-and-grab that will, as The New York Times reports, throw a billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere. Not only will it generate a cost to the environment, it also represents a threat to public health. And automakers don’t like it, because it places the United States far outside the rules being set for other nations, setting the stage for automakers to have to create U.S.-only models in a race to the bottom for the least efficient, highest polluting vehicles.

If automakers don’t want it, consumers are going to hate it, and the economy suffers from it, why is Trump so anxious to get it passed under the shadow of the virus? That would be because of exactly how the rule-gutting does its work. Thanks to this change from Trump, American consumers can expect to use 80 billion more gallons of gasoline in the cars built under Trump’s rules than Obama’s.

So there definitely is someone who loves these changes that Trump is sneaking in—the oil and gas companies. But it’s not just the rules that are changing, it’s the enforcement. Or rather, it’s the lack of enforcement. Last week, the EPA let polluters know that, since everyone was all concerned about the virus and looking the other way, they wouldn’t be bothering to enforce even the most basic rules on polluting air, water, and soil. 

As the head of Obama’s EPA made clear, this is a no-smog-barred abdication of any enforcement, a “nationwide waiver of environmental rules for the indefinite future.” So long as companies can make any claim—any claim—that their pollution is somehow related to the pandemic, the EPA has promised not only that they won’t be subject to regulation now, but that they won’t be hit with fines later. In fact, they won’t even be required to monitor how much pollution they’re creating because … didn’t someone say “virus?”

It’s open permission to allow methane to leak, allow coal slurry to flow, to do everything without concern for the spills, the smoke, the permanent harm that will be done by looters cracking open sky, sea, and earth while the nation is focused on Trump’s daily self-praise sessions. And it’s not just the fossil fuel companies that are reveling in their newfound permission; chemical companies are also giving their thanks for the virus free-for-all. After all, who’s going to be concerned about rivers slimed with toxic waste, or environments burned by excess pesticides. Everyone’s inside anyway.

The real looters are hard at work, stealing everything of value under a cloak of protection provided them by Trump. And the really funny thing is, if someone actually cracks a storefront to steal a television, you can bet it will make the news.

Around the world, there have been images that show the air or water being so much cleaner as the isolation and slow-down necessitated by the pandemic generates one unexpected benefit—a moment’s respite in the polluting of the planet. Donald Trump is doing everything he can to make sure that doesn’t happen here.

The Biden campaign is once again using Donald Trump’s own words against him to devastating effect, this time letting viewers make a direct comparison to the kind of leadership former Vice President Joe Biden would offer during the coronavirus crisis.

It’s a tough competition, of course, but the video centers on one of Trump’s worst recent coronavirus press briefing moments, when he accused hospitals of hoarding supplies—said, in fact, “I think it’s maybe worse than hoarding”—and suggested that hospital workers—doctors and nurses and clinical assistants and others working on the front lines of the fight—might be stealing the very protective supplies they are publicly begging for more of.

On the one hand you have Trump unable to believe that, with hospitals overwhelmed in a pandemic, doctors and nurses might need more protective gear. On the other hand, you have Biden saying he would use the Defense Production Act to provide masks and gowns and other personal protective equipment.

On the one hand, you have Trump saying, ”Somebody should probably look into that,” although apparently not the president or anyone who works for him. Instead, “You oughta look into that as reporters.” On the other hand, you have Biden pointing to nurses wearing garbage bags as protection, saying that’s something that urgently needs to change.

Just a devastating comparison.

Transcript:

PBS Newshour reporter Yamiche Alcindor: “You’ve said repeatedly that you think that some of the equipment that governors are requesting they don’t actually need.”

Trump: “When I hear face masks go from 10,000 to 300,000 and they constantly need more …”

Chuck Todd: “Is there an action he has not taken that you would be taking right now if you were president?”

Biden: “One, I would make sure that he uses the Defense Production Act for masks and gowns, all the things that our first responders and our doctors and nurses need.”

Trump: “Somebody should probably look into that. Cause I just don’t see from a practical standpoint how that’s—how it’s possible to go from that to that.”

Biden: “Why are we waiting? We know they’re needed. And so I would be moving rapidly.”

Trump: “Something’s going on. And you oughta look into it as reporters.”

Biden: “Look at what’s happening here. You have nurses showing up wearing garbage bags as—over their bodies as protection.”

Trump: “Where are they going? Are they going out the back door?”

Biden: “We need to get them the help they need right away.”

Trump: “There’s something going on. I don’t think it’s hoarding. I think it’s maybe worse than hoarding.”

Onscreen: Choose truth over lies. Our heroes deserve better.

It shouldn’t be all that remarkable when two leaders talk in a crisis. On Sunday morning, President Donald Trump got on the phone with Mayor Bill de Blasio to discuss what New York City needs to survive a white-hot outbreak that is only getting worse. De Blasio asked him to send more ventilators and military personnel, warning that in a week’s time, the health-care system could be overwhelmed.  

Yet with these particular leaders at this particular point in history, it is remarkable. Until recently, de Blasio told me, none of his calls to the upper reaches of the White House were returned. Two weeks ago, the Democratic mayor said publicly that Trump was “betraying” his native city by not sending more life-saving medical equipment. Ever sensitive to criticism, Trump said, in turn: “I’m not dealing with him.”

Defeating a pandemic is hard enough, but Trump has introduced another layer of complexity: He has personalized the battlefield. He calls COVID-19 “the invisible enemy,” but he also seems fixated on the visible variety—all Democratic leaders, who in his view have been insufficiently grateful for the federal government’s response. A stray complaint about equipment shortages invites a public feud with the man controlling the spigot. “If they don’t treat you right, I don’t call,” the president said at a news conference last week.

But Democrats can be useful foils for only so long—the virus is already moving beyond blue-state hot spots into the rural red states that are the pillars of Trump’s support. As more people become infected in broader swaths of the country, Trump will face a fresh wave of calls for ventilators, masks, and money. It won’t be so easy to demonize a handful of discontented governors and mayors. Complaints will be coming from friends.

Indeed, appeals from Republican governors are already starting. In a conference call with governors yesterday, Trump fielded requests for more medical equipment from leaders from both parties. Like their Democratic counterparts, Republican leaders will need to navigate Trump’s shifting moods—something they may be more suited to handle.

His proclivities have left some Democratic state officials flummoxed. They’ve been casting about for strategies to win his cooperation. De Blasio told me he looks to commend Trump when it’s deserved. “If he does something that helps my people, I will praise it and be thankful,” the mayor told me. “If he doesn’t, I’ll say it out loud and call for action.” For others, there may be no hope. Trump has called Washington Governor Jay Inslee a “snake” and said he won’t speak to him. Inslee’s team sounds utterly baffled about what to do. “We’re trying to act as if we’re interacting with a normal president, or at least a normal Republican president,” an aide in Inslee’s administration told me.

“The administration’s response in general has been an abysmal failure, and he compounds that failure by regularly attacking the governors to whom he has passed the buck,” Senator Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, told me. “I just don’t think we can allow ourselves to normalize a president who is politically attacking the very governors who are trying to save lives right now in the absence of real federal leadership.”

Inside the White House, there seems to be little sympathy for some of the Democratic governors who have complained the loudest. One White House aide described a pattern in which some governors privately praise the administration and then, later, publicly scorn Trump’s handling of the pandemic. “We have a really productive call with Governor X, who is incredibly complimentary, and then he goes out and does a press conference and kicks the shit out of us,” this person told me.

[Read: Trump is on a collision course]

“The president has been willing to talk to anyone, without regard to party, geography, or infection rates,” the presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway told me. “He’s talking to anybody and everybody who wants to get a handle on our federal response effort. We’re all navigating this unprecedented, unanticipated pandemic together.”

Trump, though, is sensitive to anything he sees as ingratitude. If his administration sends planeloads of ventilators—a national resource—he wants a thank you, not a complaint about why it didn’t come sooner.

He’s ridiculed Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, whose state has one of the largest outbreaks in the nation, over her requests for medical supplies. He’s said she’s “way in over her head” and “doesn’t have a clue.” “We send her a lot,” Trump told Fox News’s Sean Hannity last week. “Now she wants a declaration of emergency, and we’ll have to make a decision on that.” The relationship isn’t likely to mend soon. After Trump approved the disaster declaration for Michigan on Saturday, Whitmer called the move “a good start.” But she said it wasn’t sufficient to cover Michigan families’ need for meals, housing, and rental assistance.

“It’s unprecedented that a president in the middle of something like this would ask you to bow down and kiss his you-know-what in order to get things that every citizen in the United States should get right now,” Jim Ananich, the Democratic leader of the Michigan state Senate, told me. (When I asked her about Whitmer, Conway replied: “If she spent less time on TV auditioning to be Joe Biden’s vice president and more time on the ground with FEMA and medical professionals, that would be helpful to the people of Michigan.”)

[Read: Anthony Fauci’s plan to stay honest]

One Democratic governor who’s forged what seems a durable rapport with Trump is New Jersey’s Phil Murphy. The reason may come down to how he speaks about the president. He’s generous in his praise, gentle in his criticism.

When I spoke with Murphy last week, he lauded Trump for providing support for four federally run makeshift field hospitals in his state. Should Trump have said that he wants to restart the economy by Easter? I asked. Another Democrat might have used the question to skewer the president’s judgment. Murphy didn’t. Instead, he told me: “If we think we’ve broken the back of the coronavirus by Easter, I’ll be the happiest guy maybe not even in New Jersey, but America.” (Trump scuttled his Easter goal on Sunday.)

“We’ve got one president right now,” Murphy added, “and we can’t do what we need to do without the White House.” Murphy isn’t looking for a fight with Trump—and he’s not getting one. Trump called him “a terrific guy” at a news conference on Sunday.

The virus’s spread will create political pressures Trump has so far escaped. At first the disease took root in densely packed blue states where many residents travel internationally and to which tourists flock. Trump seized on that fact, pointing to red states that have had comparatively few infections. He singled out Republican Governor Jim Justice, whose rural state of West Virginia was the last in the nation to report any cases of infection. “Big Jim, the governor—he must be doing a good job,” Trump said at a news conference earlier this month. (Trump on occasion has also praised some blue-state governors for their performance, like Murphy.)

Conservative pundits have amplified Trump’s message. “These spreads are mainly in the blue states,” the author Dinesh D’Souza said in a recent Fox News appearance. “What I find kind of interesting is these blue-state governors and mayors, they’re criticizing Trump, but they also have the outstretched hand.”

Over time, though, Trump may find even some of his closest political allies demanding more help from the White House. Republicans’ traditional aversion to government intervention and economic aid will face a severe test as more and more of their constituents fall ill. Health experts expect infections to appear more widely as people living in red America travel out of state and then return home, and as people in stricken areas venture out. West Virginia, which had done little testing, now has more than 100 confirmed cases. “New York is the hardest-hit state right now only because New York has been doing more testing per capita pretty much than anyone else, and New York has a much higher population density, which is what we would expect,” Michael LeVasseur, an epidemiology and biostatistics professor at Drexel University, told me.

Before long, Republicans may be the ones with the outstretched hands. How Trump responds will prove revealing. Will he see pleas for help as more legitimate when they’re coming from red states rather than blue?

Samaritan’s Purse, the group funding and erecting the makeshift coronavirus tent hospital in New York City’s Central Park, makes all workers, including health care providers, “read and adhere” to a statement of faith that says gay people will burn in Hell. Samaritan’s Purse is run by “Christian” homophobe Franklin Graham.

If you are a Christian doctor, nurse, paramedic, or other medical professional interested in serving COVID-19 patients in our @SamaritansPurse Emergency Field Hospital in NYC, please visit https://t.co/EEw1jNtrrk. pic.twitter.com/5i7EeKxLDi

— Franklin Graham (@Franklin_Graham) March 29, 2020

Gothamist reports: “Graham, the son of prominent minister Billy Graham, has specifically sought to recruit Christian medical staff to the Central Park facility. According to the group’s website, all volunteers, including health care workers, should read and adhere to a statement of faith, in which marriage is defined as ‘exclusively the union of one genetic male and one genetic female’ and the unrighteous are sentenced to ‘everlasting punishment in hell.'”

CBS This Morning did a report on the tent hospital. The statement of faith was not mentioned.

Gothamist adds: “Asked whether the Mayor’s Office considers this problematic, a City Hall spokesperson said the field hospital will operate as a Mount Sinai facility, and must adhere to the hospital’s policy against discrimination. The spokesperson did not say whether the city was concerned that volunteers on the project are expected to agree with the group’s anti-gay faith statement.”

Senator Brad Hoylman put the group on notice.

Said Hoylman in a press release: “COVID-19 doesn’t discriminate, and neither should Franklin Graham. It’s unacceptable that a New Yorker infected with COVID-19 could be subjected to discriminatory treatment from an organization whose leader calls us ‘immoral’ and ‘detestable.’ Today I’m calling on Franklin Graham to publicly assure LGBTQ New Yorkers that they will receive the same treatment as anyone else at the Central Park field hospital. The City of New York and the Mount Sinai hospital network must monitor conditions closely at Graham’s facility and ensure every single LGBTQ patient is treated fairly. We cannot abandon our moral compass in the middle of a pandemic. Sadly, beggars can’t be choosers: New York needs every ventilator we can get. But homophobic pastor Franklin Graham and his field hospital operation in Central Park must guarantee all LGBTQ patients with COVID-19 are treated with dignity and respect. We’ll be watching.”

Added Hoylman: “Graham has a long history of homophobic and transphobic remarks. He’s called LGBTQ activists ‘immoral,’ said being gay or trans is ‘detestable,’ and even claimed Satan is behind the fight for equal rights. Graham’s nonprofit, Samaritan’s Purse, is setting up a massive field hospital in Central Park. LGBTQ New Yorkers already experience health disparities compared to the general population, including higher rates of HIV, cancer and respiratory health issues. This means many LGBTQ New Yorkers have weaker immune systems or pre-existing conditions that make them more vulnerable to COVID-19.”

The post Group Behind NYC Central Park Tent Hospital Makes Workers Adhere to ‘Statement of Faith’ That Says Gays Will Burn in Hell appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

Today, March 31, is the 10th annual Transgender Day of Visibility, but Idaho’s governor Brad Little chose to mark it by demonizing transgender people with the signing of two bills into law that take away their rights.

CNN reports: “One measure bans transgender girls from playing on girls’ and women’s sports teams, while the other prohibits transgender people from changing their gender on Idaho birth certificates. Little’s office did not comment on the laws. House Bill 500, also known as the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, says ‘athletic teams or sports designated for females, women, or girls shall not be open to students of the male sex.’ The measure says that a ‘dispute’ about an athlete’s gender can only be resolved by examining ‘the student’s reproductive anatomy, genetic makeup, or normal endogenously 19 produced testosterone levels.’ Little also signed into law Monday House Bill 509, which prohibits transgender people from obtaining a new birth certificate with their gender identity on it.”

Human Rights Campaign president Alphonso David condemned Little’s actions: “We are living in an unprecedented global health crisis, with confirmed cases of COVID-19 increasing on a daily basis in Idaho, across the United States and around the world, but Governor Brad Little and the Idaho legislature have decided to prioritize the demonization of transgender people. This is unacceptable, and a gross misuse of taxpayer funds and trust. Idaho is leading the way in anti-transgender discrimination, and  at a time when life is hard enough for everyone, Idaho’s elected leaders will be remembered for working to make their transgender residents’ lives even harder. Shame on Governor Little and the legislators who championed these heinous pieces of legislation.” 

“

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Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) discusses the stimulus bill known as the CARES Act after the bill was passed at the US Capitol on March 27, 2020, in Washington, DC. | Win McNamee/Getty Images

House Democrats want infrastructure to be part of a fourth coronavirus bill, but they need Republican support first.

The House and Senate likely won’t return to Capitol Hill until April 20 at the earliest, but that’s not stopping House Democrats from thinking about a fourth coronavirus stimulus package.

One major initiative Democrats are already contemplating is an infrastructure bill, particularly related to coronavirus recovery. A list could include expanding America’s broadband and 5G internet to allow more Americans to work from home; modernizing hospitals and community health care centers; and updating crumbling water pipelines.

“The fourth bill would be about recovery,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told reporters on a Monday press call. “We would like to see in what comes next something that has always been nonpartisan ... and that would be an infrastructure piece that takes us into the future.”

Pelosi and two House committee chairs — House Energy and Commerce Committee chair Frank Pallone and House Committee on Education and Labor chair Bobby Scott — laid out a number of priorities they plan to work toward in the coming weeks, including more protective equipment and increased health and safety regulations for doctors and nurses, and other essential workers like grocery store workers and pharmacists. Democrats also continued to push for free coronavirus treatment for everyone, including the uninsured.

“I guarantee you you’re going to get some surprise bills, whoppers,” Scott said, nodding to the high cost of a visit to the emergency room or long-term intensive care. “The average family is going to be bankrupt, even if they have insurance.”

Of course, in order to have a bill go anywhere, Pelosi would need buy-in from the Trump administration before she could get cooperation from the Republican-controlled Senate. Having just passed a historic $2 trillion bill, Republicans right now seem reluctant to spend much more.

“I’m not sure you need a fourth package,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said this weekend on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures.

The three influential House leaders also talked about where they think Democrats and Republicans could agree on another potentially costly stimulus package. Pelosi repeatedly came back to infrastructure, noting that it is one of the priorities Democrats share with President Donald Trump.

“In terms of recovery, that’s probably the most bipartisan path we could take,” Pelosi said. “Infrastructure’s never been a partisan issue, ever. It’s a public health issue, actually: clean air, clean water. In addition to that, it’s an economic issue, it’s a job issue.”

What we know about House Democrats’ priorities so far

Pelosi emphasized to reporters that the House is in the very early phases of gathering ideas for a fourth coronavirus bill. The legislation is yet to be drafted, but the House speaker added she’d like something ready to go when Congress returns next month.

“I do think it is important that as soon as we’re here, we’re ready to pass legislation,” Pelosi said. “I’d not suspect we’d have any bipartisan legislation before we return.”

Here’s what’s on House Democrats’ list of ideas that could show up in an eventual draft:

• OSHA regulations for workers’ safety: For the last three rounds of bills, Democrats have been attempting to beef up regulations for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which currently don’t include a standard to address airborne infectious diseases. Specifically, Democrats want OSHA to adopt an Emergency Temporary Standard to get regulations on the books both for doctors and nurses, and other essential workers like pharmacists and grocery store workers.

“It is absolutely essential that legislation is required,” Pelosi said. “If we fail to act, we will be making the situation even more dangerous.”

• Free coronavirus treatment: House Democrats included this provision in a bill they introduced last week, before the Senate passed the CARES Act. It would eliminate cost-sharing for coronavirus treatment and vaccines for all patients, including those who are uninsured. The cost of coronavirus treatment can range from thousands of dollars to tens of thousands, according to a recent Time report. (Though, as Rep. Katie Porter pointed out to my colleague Emily Stewart, the administration could do this on its own.)
• Increased direct payments to workers: On Monday’s call, Pelosi floated the idea to send out more direct payments to Americans and possibly increase the amount. After the passage of the CARES Act, every American making less than $75,000 annually will receive a one-time $1,200 check from the federal government to spur consumer spending. Depending on how long the coronavirus outbreak and resulting economic crisis in the US last, Pelosi made it clear she’d like to see additional direct payments.
• An infrastructure bill: Pelosi, Pallone, and Scott all talked about provisions they’d like to see if House Democrats pursue an infrastructure bill to help put Americans back to work after the coronavirus outbreak lessens. Although infrastructure talks between Democrats and Trump haven’t gone very far in the past three years — to the point that “Infrastructure Week” has become a running joke in Washington — Democratic leaders seem eager to find common ground on issues like expanding America’s rural broadband and 5G internet capacity; investing money into rebuilding aging hospitals and community health centers; and repairing or rebuilding water infrastructure like aging pipes.

“We need more community health centers in rural areas,” Pallone said, highlighting one of the ways Congress could improve America’s health infrastructure after the coronavirus crisis subsides.

Democrats are in the earliest stages of brainstorming ideas for a next coronavirus package, and it’s too early to tell whether Republicans will get on board. But this gives us an outline of what to expect from Democratic leaders going forward.

It wasn’t going to be long before the left-left of the progressive movement turned on New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (aka AOC). The same crowd that claimed that Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren was a Wall Street corporatist neoliberal snake wasn’t going to stand for anyone that challenged Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’s “leadership” of the left. 

I just expected that acrimony to take longer to show up. 

I’ve written about it before, like here, but in short—AOC was wooed relentlessly by Warren during her presidential bid, but she ended up endorsing Sanders, not because of his similarly aggressive outreach (there was none, just one courtesy call his staff forced him to make), but seemingly out of gratitude for helping her get elected. It is, after all, the oldest adage in politics—you reward those who brought you. And that endorsement, coming in the heels of Sanders’s mid-October heart attack, provided a jolt of energy. It didn’t expand his coalition—he was and is mired at 30%, but it did energize his core base at a time when doubts about his health threatened to knock him down. As a result, she solidified the very liberal support that Warren desperately needed to stay competitive.

Yet that partnership frayed over time, with AOC upset at the Sanders campaign for things like ignoring her advice, failing to be conciliatory toward Warren and her supporters, and knocking her on her immigration advocacy. As a result, she disappeared from Bernie rallies, engendering bitterness from the Sanders camp. She gently chided online Bernie Bros for their hatred: 

She was even more explicit in this NY Times interview a couple of weeks ago. “There’s so much emphasis on making outreach as conflict-based as possible,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said. “And sometimes I even feel miscast and understood. Because it’s about what tools you use, and conflict is one tool but not the only tool.”

But it was this AOC tweet that seemingly solidified the split: 

The Bernie left lost its collective head over this. With responses like this one: 

We’re talking thousands of comments like that. AOC had praised a Bernie foe, one who refused to endorse him, and as such deserved the scorn of the with-us-or-against-us crowd. It was breathtaking in its shortsightedness. But, perhaps, not so surprising, given Sanders’ 30% strategy, which included othering any enemies, no matter how closely aligned they might be ideologically. 

That’s why I wrote a piece titled, “The left won’t win the White House if it rallies around another 30% candidate.” Is that even controversial? If you don’t even try to win a majority of Democrats, what good are you? Be a gadfly in the corner! Play the part of “conscience of the party” if you want, But don’t harm our chances to win a majority with exclusionary and self-defeating politics! 

Apparently, AOC has come to the same conclusion, as Politico noted that the once crusading firebrand had tamped down this cycle. “Of the half-dozen incumbent primary challengers Justice Democrats is backing this cycle, Ocasio-Cortez has endorsed just two,” Alex Thompson and Holly Otterbein reported. “Neither was a particularly risky move: Both candidates — Jessica Cisneros in Texas and Marie Newman in Illinois — were taking on conservative Democrats who oppose abortion rights and later earned the support of several prominent national Democrats.” 

Daily Kos supported both those primary challenges, putting them well in the mainstream of the practical American left—improve the party where we can. This isn’t to knock Justice Democrats. I will never criticize a primary challenge. No elected official is entitled to her or his seat by fiat, for life. There’s definitely a place for Justice Democrats and I appreciate the work they do. But they have a role to play, and our role at Daily Kos has been more pragmatic. Pragmatism has its limits—we didn’t back the AOC primary challenge. We didn’t back Ayanna Pressley’s challenge either, and she’s my favorite. That is to say, pragmatism isn’t everything, but it’s our niche. I respect  Justice Democrats without thinking they are better or worse than us. Is that clear? 

What is clear, however, is that AOC has decided to tack more practical. It’s actually the smart political play. It doesn’t mean she's a sellout, which is what the usual suspects are calling her after reading that article, it just means that she has plans to rise up in the party. The sky is the limit, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that I see a President Ocasio-Cortez as a real possibility. But getting there means building bridges, because guess what—the Bernie left will never have power as long as it insists on black-and-white us-versus-them politics that limit them to a pathetic 30%. Ideologically, we’re a majority of our party, from things like Medicare for All, to war, to racial and gender justice, we’re the majority. And yet the Democratic electorate picked a nominee who is … problematic on all of that stuff. Why? Because Joe Biden spent a lifetime building bridges. All the political correctness in the world won’t get you elected if people think you’re an asshole. 

So AOC basically decided to keep building the movement with honey rather than vinegar. If you care about progressive politics, that’s a good thing. What’s more important? That progressive ideas win, or that Bernie himself win? Any movement that rests on a single individual is not a movement at all, but a cult of personality. Yet too many people are overly invested in that cult of personality. 

Too many people prefer being in the aggrieved minority, including Cenk—who spent $1 million to get 6% of the primary vote in a congressional race this year and is working hard to bust a union at his company. But he is not alone, because of course he is not. 

Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

With more than 150,000 confirmed positive COVID-19 cases, more than 2,800 deaths (as of the moment I am writing this sentence), and at least triple-digit numbers in nearly every state, you'd think even Republicans would realize now is the time to preserve the nation's health care system, such as it is. You'd be wrong. None of the 18 Republican state attorneys general suing to overturn the Affordable Care Act is relenting. Neither is Donald Trump nor Attorney General William Barr.

"Representatives for five of those attorneys general—from the states of Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri, and Tennessee—confirmed to The Daily Beast that the coronavirus outbreak has not changed their plans to try and kill the health care law as parties to the case of Texas v. California," that outlet reports. The other 13 either declined to comment or just ignored the request for comment from reporter Sam Brodey. As of publication of Brodey's story, Georgia had more than 1,700 cases and Tennessee about 1,000. They are echoing their dear leader Trump, who said last week that "what we want to do is get rid of the bad health care and put in a great health care."

Spoiler alert—there is no plan for "great health care" in the Trump administration. Or in any of those states. Or in the Republican U.S. Senate or among Republicans in the House. Still. It's quite possible that the Supreme Court, and specifically Chief Justice John Roberts, sees what's happening around the country and gives a damn. But, as always, that's a thin reed on which to rest all our hopes.

Meanwhile, Congress has guaranteed that people can get a coronavirus test for free, presuming that the nation under a Trump administration ever manages to secure enough tests to do so. But thus far Sen. Mitch McConnell's Senate has refused to allow universal coverage of coronavirus care. Which means that uninsured people are being turned away from treatment and dying. That's where we're at now. In a pandemic without the ACA, there's at least 20 million more people without insurance and at risk of being turned away.

That is a crime, or should be. Democratic attorney general Xavier Becerra of California, who is leading the defense of the law in federal court, says that "no one should want to risk access to public health" in the "new reality" of this pandemic. And yet, they do. And will.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: The Trump administration is expected on Tuesday to announce its final rule to roll back Obama-era automobile fuel efficiency standards, relaxing efforts to limit climate-warming tailpipe pollution and virtually undoing the government's biggest effort to combat climate change. The new rule, written by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation, would allow vehicles on American roads to emit nearly a billion tons more carbon dioxide over the lifetime of the cars than they would have under the Obama standards and hundreds of millions of tons more than will be emitted under standards being implemented in Europe and Asia. Trump administration officials have raced to complete the auto rule by this spring, even as the White House is consumed with responding to the coronavirus crisis. President Trump is expected to extol the rule, which will stand as one of the most consequential regulatory rollbacks of his administration, as a needed salve for an economy crippled by the pandemic. [...] The new rule, which is expected to be implemented by late spring, will roll back a 2012 rule that required automakers' fleets to average about 54 miles per gallon by 2025. Instead, the fleets would have to average about 40 miles per gallon. To meet the new number, fuel economy standards would have to rise by about 1.5 percent a year, compared to the 5 percent annual increase required by the Obama rule. The industry has said it would increase fuel economy standards by about 2.4 percent a year without any regulation. The new standard would lead to nearly a billion more tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide released and the consumption of about 80 billion more gallons of gasoline over the lifetime of the vehicles built during the terms of the rule, according to a recent draft of the plan. The report says about 20 states are expect to sue the Trump administration to undo the rule in a case expected to be resolved by the Supreme Court in the coming years.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Republicans are still going after the safety net.

Nothing to see here, just CBS News reporting on an audio recording of a call between Donald Trump and state governors in which Trump says, in response to requests for more testing kits, "I haven't heard anything about testing in weeks."

In weeks? Nobody has bothered to tell Donald Trump, theoretical president, "anything about testing" in weeks? During a nationwide emergency? One in which a lack of testing is the defining feature of both the early containment failures and the timing of when "social distancing" measures can be lifted? After Mike Pence promised “4 million” tests, a number that drifted off into parts unknown soon afterwards?

In weeks?

The Global Wind Energy Council, an industry trade organization, released its review of the market in 2019. During the past year, wind power saw its second-largest amount of new installed capacity ever, with over 60GW going in. From a report: But the news going forward is a bit more uncertain, with the report predicting that after years of double-digit growth, the industry would see things tail off into steady-but-unspectacular territory. And that prediction was made before many key markets started dealing with the coronavirus. Wind power is now one of the cheapest options for generating electricity. In many areas of the globe, building and maintaining wind power is cheaper per unit of power than it is to fuel a previously constructed fossil fuel plant. While offshore wind remains more expensive, its prices have dropped dramatically over the last several years, and it is rapidly approaching price parity with fossil fuels.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The TSA is providing daily travel numbers. (ht @conorsen)

This is another measure that will be useful to track as the economy starts to reopen.

Click on graph for larger image.

This data shows the daily total traveler throughput from the TSA for 2019 (Blue) and 2020 (Red).

Donald Trump called in to Fox & Friends Monday morning and openly admitted that if more people vote, Republicans will lose. Democrats are pushing for vote by mail so that people don’t have to risk coronavirus to exercise their right to vote. Asked about “special interest projects” added to coronavirus relief bills, that is right where Trump’s mind went.

“The things they had in there were crazy,” he said. “They had levels of voting that if you ever agreed to it you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” You might think it’s amazing to hear a politician in a democracy saying that democracy is bad, but Trump joins a long line of Republicans saying that too much voting is bad.

Rep. Thomas Massie objected to the same provision in coronavirus response, tweeting that “Universal vote by mail would be the end of our republic as we know it.” Because apparently our republic as we know it is dependent on it being easier for rich white people to vote.

In 2018, Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith "joked" about voting at colleges, saying, “there’s a lot of liberal folks in those other schools who maybe we don’t want to vote. Maybe we want to make it just a little more difficult. And I think that’s a great idea.”

In 2019, House Democrats introduced a bill making Election Day a holiday for federal workers and “provid[ing] election administration assistance,” and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell sneered that it was a “power grab” by Democrats. Because, again, nonpartisan efforts to make it easier to vote scare the crap out of Republicans.

But you can also go back to the 1970s, as Rick Perlstein does, when President Jimmy Carter proposed voting reforms from same-day voter registration to abolishing the Electoral College and Republicans rose up in outrage, with one influential columnist calling it a plan to “blow the Republican Party sky high.”

You can look at all the times over the past decade that Republicans have acknowledged that the point of voter ID laws is to suppress voting by people of color and younger people—because they might vote for Democrats.

And you can go back to where we started, with Donald Trump referring to “levels of voting that if you ever agreed to it you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” Republicans depend on people not voting because they can’t win otherwise.

In just over a month, Donald Trump has gone from predicting that U.S. coronavirus cases would be “down close to zero” very soon to suggesting that a mere 100,000 to 200,000 deaths would represent “a very good job” by him.

In response, the terms “moving the goalposts” and “chutzpah” are fighting it out over which applies more perfectly to this shift. Spoiler alert: It’s a tie.

The “down close to zero” claim came on February 26, when there were 15 reported cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. Some of Trump's other greatest hits include saying, on February 2, “we pretty much shut it down coming in from China,” and, on February 19, “I think the numbers are going to get progressively better as we go along,” and, on March 10, “It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.”

Now he’s all “Hey, at least it probably won’t be 2.2 million.” That number was a projection, made two weeks ago, of the possible result if the U.S. did nothing to slow the spread of the virus, and Trump really wants us to remember it. He wants us to remember it so much he said the number 16 times in Sunday’s press briefing, so that when the number isn’t that bad—after governors of several states got way out in front of the federal government and Trump was pressured away from his original desire to see restrictions lifted by Easter—he can claim credit.

Credit. For “only” 100,000 or so deaths.

That’s nearly twice as many Americans who died in the Vietnam war. Well over 10 times as many compared to those that died in Iraq and Afghanistan. And it’s Trump’s current benchmark for success.

After his administration's testing failures on top of his lies and denialism (see above) helped get us here. Nope. Nope nope nope HELL NOPE.

The Hungarian parliament on Monday voted by a two-thirds majority to allow the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to rule by decree without a set time limit.

While the new legislation remains in place, no elections can be held and Orbán's government will be able to suspend the enforcement of certain laws. Plus, individuals who publicize what are viewed as untrue or distorted facts — and which could interfere with the protection of the public, or could alarm or agitate a large number of people — now face several years in jail.

In the vote, 137 members of parliament were in favor, 53 against and 9 did not cast a ballot. The new rules can only be lifted with another two-thirds vote of the parliament and a presidential signature.

The legislation has elicited deep concern both among civil rights groups in Hungary and international institutions, with officials from the Council of Europe, United Nations and Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe publicly expressing fears about the bill. The legislation also drew criticism from members of the European Parliament.

Critics say that emergency measures to address the coronavirus crisis should be temporary and time-limited to allow for checks and balances. Hungary is currently facing Article 7 proceedings under the EU Treaty, used when a country is considered at risk of breaching the bloc's core values.

"Civil society, journalists and international and European organizations will have to step up their efforts even more in this new situation to ensure that the potential for grave abuses by government overreach are monitored, documented and responded to," Márta Pardavi, co-chair of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, a human rights NGO, said following the passage of the bill.

"It's now essential that the idea that executive power cannot be unlimited is reinforced by action," she said. "The health crisis cannot be allowed to turn into a constitutional crisis."

Asked to respond to critics' worries, a spokesperson for the Hungarian government said that "we already responded [to] those critics" and directed POLITICO to the Twitter page and blog of Hungarian State Secretary Zoltán Kovács, who has written that "false claims of a power grab in Hungary are just that."

"Such insinuations are not only incorrect but defamatory, and impede the government’s efforts in slowing down the spread of the coronavirus," Kovács added.

Lucian Wintrich, “Twinks 4 Trump” founder, alt-right sympathizer, and formerly credentialed White House reporter for the conservative blog Gateway Pundit, held a “Corona Potluck” at his NYC apartment, social distancing be damned.

“Twinks for Trump” was an art project featuring shirtless men wearing ‘Make America Great Again’ hats which was displayed at a Milo Yiannopoulos “Gays for Trump” party at the Republican National Convention in 2016.

The New York Post reports on Wintrich’s potluck: “About 20 people jammed his artfully-decorated apartment, drinking and socializing under Wintrich’s massive erotic oil painting depicting the murder of Abel, encased in a gilded baroque frame. … At the time of the Wintrich soiree, New York had already shut down Broadway. Just hours after the last revelers went home, the city announced that schools, bars and restaurants would also follow suit. In March 15th guidelines, the city health department recommended people “keep at least 6 feet between yourself and others, whenever possible,” and cease all non-essential travel. The federal government has urged all Americans to avoid crowds of 10 or more.”

Said Wintrich’s invite (above) which featured an image of the virus with a fork in it and a kid speckled with chicken pox: “They can’t diagnose us all. Don’t wash your hands. … Bring your fav dish!”

Wintrich told the NY Post: “The majority of folks I invited, if they got it, would recover fairly quickly and build up an immunity to the present form of COVID19. It was relatively inspired by the chickenpox parties that were all the rage in the 90s.”

In November 2017, Wintrich was arrested after assaulting a woman at a speech he was giving at UConn titled “It’s Ok to Be White”.

Wintrich’s experience as a writer seems to have begun with his tongue-in-cheek approach to personal harassment in college. According to a VICE profile of Wintrich, “his writings were rejected by the student newspaper” at Bard College while he was a student there, so Wintrich subsequently started a rival blog, which posted an anonymously written column referring to a fellow student’s vagina as “cold and damp” and linking to her personal Facebook page.

Wintrich is known to be close to or associated with such alt-right figures as Milo Yiannopoulos, “Pharma bro” Martin Shkreli, Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes, and “citizen journalist” vigilante James O’Keefe.

The post ‘Twinks 4 Trump’ Founder Lucian Wintrich Held a ‘Corona Potluck’ in His NYC Apartment Inspired by ‘Chickenpox Parties in the ’90s’ appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

We need to find the right language to capture the awful truth of this moment.

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